(From agencies) It's just a reminder the Iraqi elite that their is a country full of people they choose to ignore Why? They're more interested in power than the people
As immigrants move outside big cities, more US schools create welcome programs
BRIDGING DIVIDES
Foreign-born students now make up 6 percent of the total US public school population. Experts say schools can be a place for integration.
Donald Trump and his racist anti immigrant supporters are really going to be pissed off about this
What is the most expensive object on Earth?
By Ed DaveyBBC News The earth? Wall Street? The City in London? Boris Johnson's hair?
The incredible explosion of slavery after 1790, in one GIF
We investigate the horrifying consequences for civilians under Russian air strikes in Syria.
Since September 30, 2015, Russia has been carrying out air strikes in Syria in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad. The campaign has been relentless and growing in intensity, with Russian jets flying 444 combat sorties against more than 1,500 targets between February 10 and 16 alone.
Moscow insists these attacks have been aimed only at fighters from ISIL and other "terrorist groups" such as al-Nusra Front. But monitoring groups, including the Violations Documentation Center and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, say thousands of non-combatants have also been killed or wounded.
Amnesty International and others have said the bombings may be war crimes. Indeed, Amnesty has also cited consistent reports of second bombardments from planes returning to kill and injure rescue workers, paramedics and civilians attempting to evacuate the wounded and the dead from earlier raids.
Tucked in a leafy suburb of the Lebanese town of Jounieh, a short drive from the sparkling Mediterranean, stands a monument to human cruelty.
In this derelict two-story house, 75 Syrian women were forced into sexual slavery, the largest human trafficking network ever uncovered in Lebanon.
Here, the women were imprisoned after arriving from their war-torn country, sold for less than $2,000, and forced to have sex more than 10 times a day. Here they were beaten and tortured and electrocuted, and sometimes flogged if they didn’t get enough tips.
The windows and balconies are barred – giant cages where windows are painted black, depriving the women even of sunlight.
Supply shortages force Venezuela's largest brewer to halt production
Venezuela's largest brewer has closed its last factory due to supply shortages, in the latest in a string of bad news for Latin America's main oil producing economy. There is also food rationing and spiraling inflation.
Electricity blackouts, food rations, the world's highest inflation, and now no beer - Venezuela's downward economic spiral knows no limits.
The country's largest brewer on Friday closed down the last of its four factories because of a shortage of imported barley. Cerveceria Polar, a unit of the country's largest food enterprise, Empresas Polar, produces nearly 80 percent of Venezuela's beer.
As a result of falling oil prices, external debt and government exchange policies, importing even the most basic of goods has become a challenge for the cash-crunched socialist government.
Putting names and faces to the victims of Burundi’s crisis
It was almost exactly one year ago, on April 26, 2015, that Burundi saw the first casualty in its deadly demonstrations against the country's ruling party, when a protester was killed by a stray bullet. Since then, at least 700 people have died and 800 have disappeared, according to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). One group of activists have tried to move beyond the statistics by creating a website that tells the stories of victims of the conflict.
On April 25, 2015, Burundi’s ruling party announced that incumbent president Pierre Nkurunziza would run for a third term in office. The announcement, which flew in the face of the two-term limit in the constitution, sparked massive protests.
The government cracked down on protesters immediately, referring to them as terrorists and often firing at crowds. On May 13, military officers attempted a coup d’état. When that failed, repression of protesters intensified.
KARACHI: After slapping a ban on the feature film Maalik a day ago, the federal government has now banned a documentary film Among the Believers directed by Mohammad Ali Naqvi.
Ironically, the documentary has been screened in 20 countries and has already bagged 12 awards.
The documentary focuses on the Lal Masjid situation and apart from following Maulana Abdul Aziz and his network for five years it also contains those never-shared-before stories of people who stood up against extremist ideology.
Malawi's albinos at risk of 'total extinction,' U.N. warns
Malawi's albinos are at risk of "total extinction" amid escalating attacks against them for their body parts, the United Nations warned.
Albinism is a genetic condition that leads to little or no pigment in the eyes, skin and hair. The southern African nation has about 10,000 albinos, according to the U.N.
In some African countries, albinos' body parts are believed to bring wealth and good luck. As a result, attackers chop off their limbs and pluck out organs, and sell them to witchdoctors.
Even after albinos are killed, some attackers go a step further and steal their remains from graveyards, said Ikponwosa Ero, the United Nations' expert on albinism.
Eight years for falling asleep in a car: welcome to Angola's penal system
Prisoners detained for years on minor charges accuse the police of using violence to extract false confessions. Maka Angola reports
One Friday night in Angola’s capital 24-year-old Domingos Manuel Filipe Catete had had a few too many drinks and passed out in a stranger’s minivan. When the owner discovered him, he was taken to the local police station and arrested.
California rejects 'John Wayne Day' because of actor's 'racist' past
Don't worry America's conservatives will be offended, horrified and feel like they're victims of politically liberal haters Poor things
Secular state must monitor mosques, says Kauder
Mosques in Germany should be placed under state supervision, according to a leading conservative parliamentarian. Volker Kauder distanced himself, however, from a Bavarian call that imams speak German.
Just go all the way and make worshiping Islam illegal Volker Kauder will feel better and have Ted Cruz and Donald Trump as kindred spirits How exciting
Defunct gov't agency exempted from indictment over Fukushima crisis
APR. 29, 2016 - 03:30PM JST Why hold anyone from the government agency tasked with regulating nuclear power plants and their safety protocols or TEPCO for the deaths of hundreds of people thanks to their complete incompetence
Hundreds of demonstrators have blocked traffic outside a venue in California where Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump was holding a rally.
A police car had its windows smashed as Mr Trump spoke inside a hall in the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Some 20 arrests were made.
Mr Trump has vowed to deport millions of illegal immigrants if he is elected US president in November.
He faces strong opposition in parts of California, particularly among Latinos.
California, the biggest prize for Republican candidates in the nomination race, holds its primaries on 7 June.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump called himself the Republican "presumptive nominee" after five new primary wins in the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says WikiLeaks was reckless
Ex-Washington Post journalist says whistleblowing group should have protected intelligence officials’ identity when it released military files
Press Association
WikiLeaks has been “reckless” by releasing classified information without trying to protect intelligence officials, according to one of the reporters who broke theWatergate scandal.
Carl Bernstein said the whistleblowing organisation, which has released millions of confidential documents including military operation records, had “done some very useful things” but also acted in a “careless” way.
The former Washington Post reporter, who helped expose the political scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as US president, also insisted that the best journalism was achieved by talking to people, and not through social media.
Isis in Iraq: Terror group are turning to fish farms and car dealerships to fund activities after losing territory
A report by the Iraqi judiciary says the group are finding new ways to pay their fighters after losing oil revenues
Isis has turned to running car dealerships and fish farms to offset their diminishing oil income, Iraqi authorities have said.
A report by Iraq’s central court of investigation in Baghdad said the terror group is increasingly using non-traditional means to pay their fighters and finance their activities as they are pushed out of the territory they once held.
Security experts once estimated that Isis’ annual income was around $2.9bn (£1.98bn) when they declared their caliphate in 2014.
At their height, the militants controlled one third of Iraq’s territory - including the second city Mosul - as well as large swathes of Syria, and received much of their income from oil and gas installations.
Dozens of police injured, scores arrested at French labour protests
Latest update : 2016-04-29
Two dozen police officers were injured Thursday, three of them seriously, as violence flared in mass protests across France against a hotly contested labour reform bill.
Security forces in Paris responded with tear gas as masked youths threw bottles and cobblestones, leaving three policemen with serious injuries, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, adding that 24 police were injured overall.
Clashes between police and protesters also erupted in the cities of Nantes, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse, with 124 people arrested nationwide, Cazeneuve said.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls strongly condemned the unrest, which he blamed on "an irresponsible minority". "They will be brought to justice. Support to the police," he wrote on Twitter.
Are 'democracy' and 'human rights' Western colonial exports? No. Here's why.
April 29, 2016 - 4:10PM
Loubna El Amine
Washington:In September 2014, students in Hong Kong gathered in a public square to protest some of the Beijing government's legislative initiatives. One of their slogans was "When dictatorship becomes a reality, revolution is a duty", which has been attributed to Victor Hugo.
During the Arab Spring, protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria raised such slogans as: "The people want the overthrow of the regime", "Bread, freedom, social justice" and "The revolution of dignity and freedom".
Some academics and public intellectuals who study non-Western societies, worried about imposing Western values, have expressed concern about the use of categories like human rights and liberal democracy. They have instead favoured drawing on non-Western societies' own intellectual traditions and lived experiences. Thus the academic debate about the form of government that China should adopt has focused on drawing from the ideals of Confucianism.
Will burning ivory help stop poaching? Kenya says yes.
The Kenyan government says that burning a large stockpile of ivory will show the world that it is committed to ending the ivory demand. But some advocates for elephants argue that destroying ivory only increases its value.
The Kenyan government wants to send a message to poachers and illegal smugglers of ivory. The way they plan to make their point is to set ablaze the largest stockpile of ivory in history, approximately 100 tons of elephant ivory, or 5 percent of the world’s ivory.
On April 30th, the president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, will start the fire at the Nairobi National park joined by a few head of states from the continent's elephant-ranging states, including Botswana, Gabon, and Zimbabwe.
By burning the ivory, Kenya hopes show the world its commitment to ending the ivory trade, a business that has lead to the killing of thousands of elephants. Every year about 20,000 to 35,000 of elephants are poached in Africa, driven by the growing demand for ivory around the globe, especially Asia. In Kenya alone, 164 elephants and 35 rhinos were killed in 2014, a drop from the 302 elephants and 59 rhinos that were killed in 2013.
With several recent data breaches, are governments and companies doing enough to protect our information online?
In today's digital world, data is king. And as we move more and more of our lives online, the risk of fraud and identity theft grows ever larger.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost every year because of cyber attacks, and it's something that affects us all; individuals, businesses and governments alike.
In February, hackers accessed an account held by Bangladesh's central bank at New York's Federal Reserve. They tried to steal almost a billion dollars - and managed to get $81 million. It's been described as the biggest online theft in history.
Now, it's been revealed they did it using SWIFT, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day.
Officials from SWIFT warned customers this week that hackers are also targeting other financial institutions using their network.
Janna Jihad Ayyad believes it is her duty to record Israeli injustices throughout the occupied West Bank and beyond.
Oklahoma court: oral sex is not rape if victim is unconscious from drinking
The ruling sparked outrage among critics who argue the judicial system engaged in victim-blaming and upholding outdated notions about rape and sexual assault
As long as the woman (victim) is passed out from drinking then sexual assault is Ok? Are these fools on drugs, living in the 12th century or just unqualified to be judges?
Mayor of Kyushu town welcomes nuclear waste disposal site talks
When your main industry is tax avoidance for tax cheats you can't have people actually exposing that Otherwise the tax cheaters will take their money elsewhere
At least 14 patients and three doctors have been killed in an air strike on a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo, the charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) says.
Among those killed in the MSF-supported al-Quds hospital was one of the city's last paediatricians, MSF said.
Local sources blamed Syrian or Russian war planes. The Syrian military later denied targeting the hospital.
Monitors say attacks by both sides left 34 dead and dozens wounded on Thursday.
Violence in Syria, and particularly in Aleppo, has intensified in recent days, despite a partial truce.
A year after the Bali Nine executions, Indonesia prepares firing squads again
Deaths of eight prisoners, including two Australians, prompted a huge outcry – and a pause in executions. But now foreigners on death row fear their own sentences could be just weeks away
The chatter is ominous. Talk that the death squad is at the ready; that a new, bigger execution ground is in the making. Officials say it could be just weeks away.
And after the circus last year, the security minister Luhut Panjaitan hopes there will be less “drama” this time around.
One year after the international uproar and the diplomatic fallout over the execution of eight drug traffickers – including two Australian men, Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran – it appears more executions could be on Indonesia’s horizon this year. Among the foreigners on death row in Indonesia are two Britons, convicted drug smugglers Lindsay Sandiford and Gareth Cashmore.
“I still don’t want to believe it,” says lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who this time last year was fighting to save the lives of Chan and Sukumaran. “Yes, there will probably be a statement, but in the end I don’t think there will be any executions. I refuse to believe it.”
Donald Trump’s incoherent speech on foreign policy shows why he’s unfit to be president
It was filled with internal contradictions, falsehoods and crazy assertions
The most remarkable aspect of Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech was that someone actually wrote it out and put it in the teleprompter. It was so filled with internal contradictions, falsehoods and genuinely crazy assertions that one would have thought Trump was speaking extemporaneously. It was a vivid display as to why he is thoroughly unprepared to become commander in chief. If anything comes of it, one hopes that a third candidate, sickened to his stomach, will have watched this, jumped from his seat and declared himself ready to rescue the country from the possibility that Trump might be president.
Having mocked use of a teleprompter last night, he used one, reading haltingly. He appeared ill at ease, nervous even. That may because the content, even as rudimentary and discombobulated as it was, did not stem from any thoughts or beliefs he might harbor. In that sense, the speech really was “foreign” to him.
Venezuelans rebel against police who cut queues for food
Waiting in long queues to buy food has become a daily reality for most people living in Venezuela, which is facing serious shortages of essential goods. When some unscrupulous police officers cut the long line in a supermarket in Valencia, people who had been waiting in line for hours got angry.
According to our Observer, who lives in the neighbourhood where the incident took place, the angry reaction shows just how fed up the population is with the special treatment that police are getting during this time of intense shortages.
The incident took place on April 23 in front of a supermarket located on one of the main streets in Valencia, the capital of the northern Venezuelan state of Carabobo. A resident filmed a pick-up truck belonging to the municipal police parked next to the supermarket entrance, where many people are standing. A man – probably a store employee – loads bags of flour into the back of the pick-up under the watchful gaze of three policemen.
NEW DELHI: India has set up eight laser walls along the shared border with Pakistan and plans to activate four more over the next few days, Times of India reported, citing a senior Indian Border Security Force (BSF) official.
A laser wall is a mechanism to detect objects passing the line of sight between the laser source and the detector. A laser beam over a river sets off a loud siren in case of a breach. The laser walls will cover stretches of treacherous terrain and riverine areas.
India plans to cover more than 40 vulnerable unfenced stretches along the Pakistan border with laser walls, with the home ministry giving it a top priority to prevent any infiltration, Times of India said in an earlier report quoting a home ministry official.
North Korea 'missile crashes' moments after launch
South Korea says suspected mid-range ballistic missile crashed, which would be second such failure in recent weeks.
North Korea fired what appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday but it crashed seconds after the test launch, South Korea's defence ministry said.
North Korean officials did not immediately comment.
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said the South Korean defence ministry claimed the missile was fired at 6:40am local time.
A defence ministry official told the Reuters news agency that it appeared to be a Musudan missile with a range of more than 3,000km - the same type of rocket believed to have failed in a test launch earlier this month.
Will mobile phone panic button help stop sexual assaults in India?
India has a large market for mobile phones, and while access has spread to the rural areas, some say that requiring extra features on the phone may increase the cost of the phones, making them unaffordable to some women
Changing the cultural perception of women will be a challenge
Saudi Arabia wants you to go on holiday there. Here's why
The conservative Middle Eastern state is looking into ways of diversifying its revenue
Come to Saudi Arabia for a holiday See beheadings Get Arrested for wearing the wrong clothes get sent to prison because Well because Imagine all the fun
First food truck rolls into Palestine
Two former prisoners have launched an environmentally friendly mobile kitchen in the occupied West Bank.
It won't last the year before the Israeli government declares it a national security threat
U.S. Ospreys win Japanese hearts and minds with quake relief flights
